Media 7 problems

[Ray Stainer]

Hi,
I have, for the 3rd time over the last few weeks, downloaded Windows Media player version 7. Each time the download and setup were acknowledged as being set up correctly.
When I run the appication it seems as though all my resources are drained by the application. Every action takes forever to function and when finally I get some audio to play the sound is split into "chunks" and distorted as though firing on 50% "cylinders".
I would appreciate any help please.
thanks
Ray

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Ray,
What's your specs? MP7 is big and may require alot of memory and/or processor speed. How much of your hdd is used up?

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

[Gallaeglagh]

Ray,

Try a different software program such as Winamp or Muicmatch. Both are much leaner and more reliable programs. I assume your computer has at least the modest specs to play audio which is something like a 133 Mhz processor.

What are you system resources before and after loading WMP?

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The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein

[This message has been edited by Gallaeglagh (edited 05-03-2002).]

[Ray Stainer]

Thanks for replies,
My spec.is:
Time Computer with:
266MHZ processor, 132Mb Ram (this is checked 3 times for some reason during boot process), 8Gb HDD with 1.95Gb Freespace, Voodoo 3dfx interactive installed since purchase.

*.avi files run OK, but CD and .mid and .wav are all as explained in my first fault description.

How can I check "system resources" before and after.

I am interested in Winamp and/or Musicmatch described by you, but I would also like to know how/whether I can use media 7 because some of my students have it on their machines.

ever Grateful Ray

[Paleo Pete]

Just to give you something for comparison, I've run WMP 7 on this P-233MMX with 32MB RAM, and had no problems, other than taking about 30 seconds to load files. With my 450 and 256MB it still takes 20 seconds or so...and by the way the 233 is no longer running on 32MB, it now has quite a bit more, but with 32MB it did run WMP 7 just fine, no sound or video problems at all. (I'm running the 233 because I'm out of town, I bring it to my mother's place every time I come down here for a visit...)

From the description of the problem it sounds like either a driver problem or a conflict somewhere. My first suggestion is to install the latest drivers for your sound and video cards, and check device manager for conflicts. If the sound card is trying to use the same IRQ as the mouse, for instance, it would possibly work, but give the machine a serious case of the hiccups. Could also be Direct X.

How about virtual memory settings? Do you have it set up so Windows can manage virtual memory or a fixed swap file size? If it's fixed it could be too small. In either case, do you have sufficient hard drive space to accomodate it? On this 233MMX I have 128MB RAM, virtual memory is set to 0 minimum, 256MB maximum, and on a 700MB partition with 600MB or so free space. It stays that way, the partition is never used except as a swap file. WMP 7 works fine, same for Winamp and Nero Media Player. I'm using an older SB16 ISA sound card with default Win98 drivers and unused CD ROM controller, S3 Trio 64 PCI video also with default Win98 drivers...(it works, why fix it??? )

Also right click My Computer, click Properties, then the Performance tab and see if you get a white box in the middle saying some drives are using MS-DOS Compatibility Mode.

Let us know...



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[Gallaeglagh]

Ray

To check system resources, assuming Win 9x, right click My Computer/performance tab if it goes below 50 percent you might look to use msconfig to keep other progrmas from loading at startup.

Also might have better luck running these files off of the hard drive rather than cd.

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